Track Palin called cops ‘peasants,’ asked father to shoot him, court documents say
December 19, 2017 by admin
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New details emerged Monday about the arrest of Track Palin, the eldest son of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, with charging documents saying he broke into his parents’ home and beat his father, who was brandishing a gun but refused to shoot.
Track Palin, 28, was arrested Saturday and is charged with first-degree burglary, fourth-degree assault and criminal mischief; he remains in custody. A court filing describes a chaotic scene at the family’s home in Wasilla, Alaska, when Track Palin confronted his father over a truck he wanted to pick up.
His father, Todd Palin, had told him not to come to the home because Track Palin had been drinking and taking pain medication, according to a sworn police affidavit and charging documents.
“Track told him he was [going to] come anyway to beat his ass,” according to an affidavit filed by Wasilla police Officer Adam LaPointe.
When Todd Palin confronted his son at the door with a pistol, the younger Palin broke a window and entered the house and started beating his father, according to court filings. Palin pushed his father to the ground and hit him repeatedly on the head, the documents say.
Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, called police at 8:30 p.m. and said her son was “freaking out and was on some type of medication.”
When police arrived, they saw Todd and Sarah Palin fleeing the house in separate vehicles, Todd Palin with blood running down his face and Sarah Palin looking “visibly upset,” the documents say.
Police confronted Track Palin in the residence. He called them “peasants” and told them to lay down their weapons, according to the documents. Eventually, Palin left the house and was placed in handcuffs.
He told police that when he arrived at the house, his father had his gun aimed at him, and he had urged his father to shoot him several times before entering the house, according to the documents.
When policed interviewed Todd Palin, he was bleeding from multiple cuts to his head, and one ear was discharging liquid, documents say. The Wasilla Police Dept. did not respond to a request for comment about whether its officers interviewed Sarah Palin.
A judge set Track Palin’s bail at $5,000. He remains in custody at the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility in Palmer, Alaska. Palmer Dist. Atty. Roman J. Kalytiak said if Palin remains in custody, his office must take the case to the grand jury within 10 days. If Palin pays bail and is released, prosecutors will have 20 days to go before the grand jury.
An attorney for Sarah and Todd Palin declined comment on the case.
“Given the nature of actions addressed … by law enforcement and the charges involved, the Palins are unable to comment further,” John Tiemessen said in a statement. “They ask that the family’s privacy is respected during this challenging situation just as others dealing with a struggling family member would also request.”
Track Palin has had previous brushes with the law. In January 2016, he was arrested for punching his girlfriend at the same Wasilla home. He pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm while intoxicated, and took a plea deal that resulted in other charges being dismissed. His girlfriend later filed for custody of their child and sought a protective order against him.
At the time of that arrest, Sarah Palin was campaigning for then-candidate Donald Trump during the GOP primaries and caucuses. She alluded to her son’s arrest during a campaign rally, suggesting that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from a military deployment in Iraq.
She described soldiers “who come home from the battlefield bringing new battles with them [and] coming back different than when they left for the war zone.”
“When my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate to other families who feel these ramifications of PTSD,” she said, before blaming then-President Obama for not respecting veterans.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, when Sarah Palin was Sen. John McCain’s running mate, she frequently spoke of her son’s service in the military. He was stationed in Iraq during most of the general election campaign.
Palin had been governor of Alaska for less than two years and was a relative unknown when she was thrust onto the national stage. The move eventually proved unpopular among some conservatives who questioned whether Palin had the experience and knowledge to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
But Palin’s folksy personality and colloquialisms strongly resonated with the party’s base, and she became a powerful force in national GOP politics following her and McCain’s loss in 2008. She resigned as governor the following year, but was a frequent presence in the media and on the campaign trail as a forceful critic of President Obama and an early supporter of the tea party. Palin sparred with the GOP establishment, and her endorsement swung Republican primary races and drew dollars.
She was the subject of several books as well as a documentary by Steve Bannon. She starred in a television show and flirted with a presidential run in 2012. Her prominence has waned since then, but she remains a popular draw among socially conservative voters.
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Corker Says He Faced ‘Tough’ Decision in Supporting Republican Tax Bill
December 19, 2017 by admin
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His decision highlights the trade-offs that Republicans, who have long pushed for fiscal responsibility, are making as they seek to score their first legislative victory since assuming political control. The $1.5 trillion tax bill, which cuts taxes for businesses and individuals, is expected to add $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Rather than pay for those cuts, lawmakers are relying on rosy assumptions about economic growth and suggesting they will cut spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security to help bring down the deficit.
Mr. Corker has been the most vocal about the need to rein in the federal deficit. He voted against the initial Senate bill, the only Republican to do so, after party leaders rejected his request to require automatic tax increases down the road if the overhaul did not generate enough revenue to pay for itself.
As recently as last Wednesday, Mr. Corker said the final changes being made to the combined Senate and House bill had done little to assuage his concerns that his party was being fiscally reckless.
“My deficit concerns have not been alleviated,” said Mr. Corker, who lamented that the bill could have been improved with more time.
On Friday, Mr. Corker stunned many in Washington when he said he would back the tax bill, which, while imperfect, would still be good for the country.
Opponents of the tax plan immediately searched for a motive in the hope that they could alter his vote in the narrowly-held Senate. With just a 52-to-48 majority in the Senate, Republicans have little room for defections given that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is receiving medical treatment in his home state and is not expected to return to Washington in time for the vote. On Monday, two additional Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, said they would vote yes.
As new details in the tax bill came to light over the weekend, an article published by the International Business Times suggested that Mr. Corker’s vote was won in exchange for a last-minute provision that would benefit real estate developers by making it easier for them to take advantage of a new, more generous tax structure for so-called pass-through businesses, whose owners pay taxes on profits through the individual code.
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Mr. Corker, who was active in the real estate business in Tennessee before becoming a senator, retains a financial stake in companies that could benefit from the change.
Critics of the Republican tax overhaul adopted a new rallying cry to criticize a bill that they say is packed with advantages for the rich: “The Corker Kickback.”
Mr. Corker, in the interview, called the accusations ”disheartening” and said that he had not changed anything in the final bill.
What’s in the Final Republican Tax Bill
The legislation would cut taxes for corporations. American taxpayers, in large part, would also get cuts, though most of the changes affecting them would expire after 2025.
“There’s nothing to buy me off with,” Mr. Corker said.
On Sunday, Mr. Corker sent a letter to Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the Republican chairman of the Finance Committee, asking that he explain how the provision became included in the bill.
“Because this issue has raised concerns, I would ask that you provide an explanation of the evolution of this provision and how it made it into the final conference report,” Mr. Corker wrote. “I think that because of many sensitivities, clarity on this issue is very important and hope that you will respond in an expeditious manner.”
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Mr. Hatch, in a letter issued on Monday morning, defended Mr. Corker and said he was “disgusted” by reports that suggested Mr. Corker had played a role in the provision’s addition. He said Mr. Corker had wanted a less generous pass-through exemption than had been included.
“I am unaware of any attempt by you or your staff to contact anyone on the conference committee regarding this provision or any related policy matter,” Mr. Hatch wrote. “To the contrary, virtually all the concerns you had raised in the past about the treatment of pass-through businesses in tax reform were to voice skepticism about the generosity of various proposals under consideration.”
In fact, the Senate bill that Mr. Corker voted against already contained big benefits for the real estate industry. In large part, that is because of a provision cutting taxes for the owners of pass-through entities. Such businesses, like partnerships and limited liability companies, do not pay taxes themselves, but instead pass through their tax liabilities to their owners. Currently, such income is taxed at rates as high as 39.6 percent. But under the Senate bill, much of that income could be taxed at a rate as low as 29.6 percent. The bill limited those tax savings, partly by pegging the lower taxes to the size of a company’s workforce.
The final bill released on Friday included a new provision permitting the real estate industry to take advantage of the lower tax rate, tying the savings to the value of their properties — regardless of their size or their number of employees. Mr. Hatch said he had inserted the provision after discussions with the House and Senate negotiators writing the final bill and a congressional leadership aide pointed out that a version of it was in the House bill.
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Democrats remain unconvinced, and they have taken to social media to voice their concerns.
“There really isn’t any other good explanation is there?” Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, wrote on Twitter, suggesting that the provision was the reason that Mr. Corker decided to back the bill.
Others, however, suggested that Mr. Corker’s change of heart was more political than financial and that he did not want to be the lone Senate Republican to vote against his party’s tax bill.
“The conspiratorial speculation about Corker’s real estate pass-through holdings seems thin to me,” said Scott Greenberg, a tax analyst at the conservative Tax Foundation. “Perhaps a simpler explanation for Corker’s flip is that his vote wasn’t needed before but is needed now.”
In Tennessee, Mr. Corker’s intended vote was welcomed on Monday.
“We’re very happy with his final position,” said Bradley Jackson, the president of Tennessee’s Chamber of Commerce, who had discussions with Mr. Corker and his office in recent weeks.
Mr. Corker said his turnaround came after he engaged in deep discussions with business groups in Tennessee and around the country, the Republican leadership in Congress, his Senate colleagues and his wife. He also spent many private moments considering how to vote, meditating over the question on the balcony of the Senate chamber.
While Mr. Corker said it was “not something that’s pleasant” to be the only Senate Republican to oppose the tax bill, his colleagues were generally respectful of his decision and only prodded him gently.
In the end, Mr. Corker was convinced that the additional debt that the tax bill would pile on was manageable relative to the country’s $43 trillion balance sheet and that businesses in his home state should have the opportunity for the additional foreign investment and other benefits that he believed the tax cuts would facilitate.
He said that he planned to make fiscal restraint a priority next year as Republicans move on to other initiatives like infrastructure and wanted to ensure that any legislation to help rebuild America’s roads and bridges was actually paid, and not financed, through deficit spending. After 2018, when his term expires, Mr. Corker’s future is less clear. But he said he was not ruling out running for office again in some capacity.
The final bill was not a ‘home run,’” Mr. Corker said, noting that he was at peace with his choice.
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“I feel like it was the right decision. I have no qualms about it,” Mr. Corker said.
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